Day 161 – Deathly Obsession – Part 3

Pending, as I have no laptop internet

I have internet finally!

Word count: 571

Three letters flopped through the letter box and on to the doormat. It was the next morning. Alan overslept by seven minutes and was nursing a pounding head with painkillers and a hot cup of tea. The last time he had slept in must have been in his teens. His body was not used to how out of synch with his schedule he was and combined with the nightmares he had had last night, he was not feeling at all well.

Last night’s conversation with his mum had ended in her hanging up, completely disbelieving anything that Alan was saying. Now, looking back on it, Alan supposed that she was sort of right. What he was saying was daft. It didn’t at all sound like the sort of thing he would normally believe himself, so it was all the more confusing when he found himself lying awake into the early hours of the night shivering with fright about ghosts and zombies, the afterlife and death. Could he really have the power to predict that? Spreading margarine over his toast, he did not believe so this side of the morning. Last night had been an entirely different matter. His dreams had been full of horrific thoughts of accidentally thinking about someone he knew dying. He tried to block the memories from his mind.
Alan finished his toast and cleaned his dishes before scooping up the letters and flicking through them. All bills. He wondered if yesterday’s incident would be in the newspapers today. He completed the rest of his morning routine and headed out to the shops.
It was raining. He put up his umbrella and edged through gaps between the puddles. Alan did not like standing on cracks nor getting his feet wet, so this was a particularly tough journey, but he made it to the local corner shop within half an hour – a trip that can on occasion take as little as three minutes, depending on the business of the pavements. After a quick rifle through in alphabetical order of all the newspapers for sale, Alan found the one he had been looking for.
There, on the third page in, was a small article on the accident. It was little more than five lines long and detailed more about the possible health and safety implications for the building company more than the woman herself.
“Oh, it’s such a shame, but it isn’t at the same time… a blessing in disguise, if you ask me,” an old lady was yapping away to another old lady, both holding copies of the newspaper that Alan was reading and both on the same page.
“Why do you say that, Anne?”
“Why the girl was my neighbour in my block of flats, lovely girl – absolutely lovely – but she was diagnosed with incurable cancer just a few months ago. The poor woman was doomed to living out the rest of her life in a horrible suffering. At least this was, she could avoid that and her family would not have to witness all that pain.”
Alan’s ears pricked up and he felt a wave of relief wash over him. Perhaps he didn’t predict her death after all…. she had been destined to die well before she had come across his path. But, then, after all…. if he had not moved, it would have been him and his name within a five line article in a newspaper….